


When the Battle's Lost and Won

by Sassaphrass



Series: Blood Magic [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Bucky Runs Away, Bucky had an awesome Grandma, Bucky has an identity outside of being Steve's Best Friend, Cross-Generational Friendship, Disjointed Timelines, Gen, Introspection, Irish!Bucky, Magic!Bucky, Who was also magic, kind of sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1751771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky runs away from everything that happened in DC. From everything that happened in the last 70 years. </p>
<p>He thinks about his grandmother's advice and considers the future. </p>
<p>(Sequel to Always a Price aka. Bucky has Magical Powers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Battle's Lost and Won

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank debwalsh, Timelady323, and Mangacat who commented on the first one of these and encouraged me to continue with this verse.

_The key to what we do my lad, is the more we want, the more we must give, because if we don't give it than it will be taken. It's easier to give something up than to have it torn from you. Trust your old granny on this one._

 

Bucky is running away. He knows it and he is not ashamed. Unlike St-...unlike certain people he'd never had a problem with running away from fights he couldn't win. 

 

He is running away in every way he can. He is heading as far away from...everyone as he can. Heading west, on the rail cars, out somewhere safe. He doubts he could get across a border, so somewhere remote was the best bet.

And he is running away inside his own head as well. Trying to disappear into the twisting loops of memory, full of pieces that should fit but didn't. Trying to find somewhere safe.

 

Instead his thoughts kept turning to that night in the park, the blood, the flowers, and what his grandmother had taught him. 

 

He hasn't thought of her in so long. He tries to only think of her now. 

 

It seemed sometimes that his grandmother was one of the few things in the world that had been well and truly his. Everything else had been shared, food, clothes, dates, even his ideals had been second hand it seemed. 

 

But him and Granny? They'd always belonged to each other first and always. 

 

Becky had been jealous, Bucky absently remembers. She hadn't understood why Granny preferred his company to hers- as though she didn't shriek and cry at grandma's stories and demand better ones with happy endings while he would sit quietly until the tale had ended. 

 

Mama had been relieved though. She and Granny butted heads over everything and Mama had been a soft spoken, timid sort of woman and Granny had often been unkind to her. So, Mama had been happy for Granny's attention to be diverted elsewhere. 

 

Bucky has come a long way. He realizes that the sky has opened up and the land has fallen away and it is  _quiet._ Without thinking he jumps down and heads out in search of...in search of something. 

 

It's odd that no on checked the rail lines he realizes. He probably took care of that without even realising. 

 

_There's two types of things you can do. Granny declared in much the same way she talked about the weather. It's like being born strong. There's things you could do because of that without thinking, and then there's the great feats of strength that no one would ever think were an accident._

 

Bucky's mouth twitches as he considers smiling at the memory. Granny had liked her metaphors when it came to explaining what she called “the family talent”. Even though the majority of the family did not in fact possess it. And the metaphors were different every time she spoke on the matter. 

 

Mama had disdained Granny's old ways. Disliking her habit of speaking Irish when she could and disapproved of her continued attachment to it's place and her 'country customs'. As though Mama being born in Indiana had meant she wasn't Irish too. 

Bucky sees what looks like a house somewhere in the distance, and staggers towards it. 

 

_There's threads you can pull on and get what you want real easy, but other times you'll need to get the scissors out and that's when you should pause and consider whether it's worth the possibility of ruining the whole fabric._

 

He knows he is pulling on what she'd called 'loose threads' now. The house would be empty when he got there. He might not need to pull the thread to make that so, but it is always nice to make sure. 

 

The house is empty. Abandoned with most of the furniture still intact and a heavy layer of dust and dirt over everything. Whoever had lived here had left everything they didn't need to start again behind. Bucky likes that. He has done the same. 

 

_Where I came from was beautiful. Big sky, green hills. But poor, dirt poor. Not like this awful place with it's noise and it's buildings and that god damned English boy from the building over filling your head with nonsense._

 

_Steve's parents are Irish too Gran. Bucky had argued. There was no harsher condemnation from Gran than to be called English._

 

_She'd sniffed and poured a bit of whiskey into her tea cup, given him a sip, when he'd nodded his approval (not that he really knew) she'd loudly declared. Well he's as good as English!_

 

Gran had never liked Steve. She'd sniffed at his good manners and was always trying to put him on edge or scare him off. When she realized that didn't work she'd taken to berating him loudly in Irish whenever she saw him and shoving little good-luck sachets of salt and cotton at Bucky whenever they went out. 

 

_There's an ill omen on that boy. You'd listen to your Gran and steer clear of him if you only had the sense that God gave a goat._

 

Bucky wishes for salt and cotton now. And Whiskey, and tobacco. Gran's old talismans and her favourite things. If he had them maybe they would protect him. He wonders if Gran had seen the shape of things or whether she'd just hated Steve for his mother's posh accent. 

 

_ It doesn't matter what you use, so long as you MEAN it.  _

_ She tells him sternly as she pours a full bottle of the best whiskey she can buy into the Hudson to ensure his sister's recovery.  _

_ It's about how much it matters. S'why bone is good, blood is better, but best is things you care about beyond words.  _

_ The bottle now empty she leans down to pat his cheek.  _

_ You'll find when you get older there's more and less of those at the same time.  _

_ He doesn't ask why Becky's scarlet fever doesn't warrant blood or bone. _

 

He draws crude drawings in the dust. His favourite Saints. Jude, for lost causes, Patrick for Gran, Catherine with the wheel. He hesitates. He doesn't remember the patron Saint of Soldiers, though he's sure there must be one. Steve was the one who cared about this stuff. He'd only gone to Mass because refusing would have led to an hour long haranguing by Gran and a disappointed and tearful look from his mother. And even then he'd escaped most Sunday's anyway. 

 

He likes this place. The quiet. He wonders if this is what Ireland is like. The grass here isn't green but the sky is big and blue and clear. Just like Gran had claimed it was in Ireland. 

 

It's funny. 70 years being shuttled from one place to another and he'd never been to Ireland. 

 

The sun it setting now. Sending red streaks across the sky. 

 

Gran's hair had been red, and Bucky, when he was small, had been deeply privately heartbroken that his wasn't. He'd wanted some obvious sign to the world that she was his gran and he was her lad. 

 

When he got older he realized it was silly. Red haired boys were as ugly as red haired girls were pretty. Besides, he'd realized she only bothered teaching  _ him _ Irish. Becky had a few phrases, but Bucky had it all. Hard learned with smacks and slaps if he tried to escape from the lessons but learned all the same. 

 

Lying on the mouldy mattress in the abandoned house on the lonely prairie he feels ice run down his spine at the thought that they might have taken that away, and scrambles upright wracking his brains for the words. 

 

__ Ár n-Athair atá ar neamh,  
Go naofar d'ainim,  
Go dtagfadh do ríocht,  
Go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamh  
mar a dhéantar ar neamh.  
Ár n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniu,  
agus maith dúinn ár bhfiacha  
mar a mhaithimidne dár bhféichiúna féin  
(Ach ná lig sinn i gcathú,  
ach saor sinn ó olc,)    
  


The words come as easily now as they had that awful day he'd had to say them over Gran's grave. She'd preferred the prayer to The Archangel Michael anyway. Gran was the sort to pray for protection, vengeance and the smiting of the wicked, not for forgiveness. Bucky is going to say that one too, but finds he can't because he's crying too hard. 

 

The red has faded from the sky now, and his mind his turning to the dark times, even as he desperately tries to think of anything else. 

 

_ The red is almost completely gone from her hair. From her missing teeth to her scarred cheek to the way that she only speaks English when it suits her, everything which once made her seem fierce now makes her seem frail... She talks about her first husband and even when she looks at Bucky she seems unbearably sad.  _

 

With great difficulty he turns his thoughts away from the past. There's a pump in the overgrown yard, which ought to be choked with weeds but against all odds when he pushes down on the handle cold clear water gushes out. 

 

There's a large pot in the kitchen. Probably too large to be easily carried by the family that lived here and so left behind. He fills it with water and places it on the fire. There's no soap, so he uses some of the ashes to try and scrub his hair and wash his face. 

 

He remembers other cold baths. But he doesn't remember many hot ones. 

 

He takes off his shoes. Peels off the soft outer layer he had used to disguise the hard shell beneath. Than shucks that as well. 

 

Another memory drifts in, independent of time or context. 

 

_ Gran's laughing at the elaborate way he's trying to fix his hair. Bucky isn't listening. Anita Young has agreed to bring her sister out tonight and he's bringing Steve and the four of them are going to go dancing. He needs to fix his hair before he leaves.  _

 

_ Just as he's about to leave, she grabs him, kisses his cheek and crows triumphantly. “My darling lad, you're as grand a man as my first husband, who ought to have been your Grandad if there'd been any justice in the world.” He smiles and bats her away but is flush with pride when he ducks outside.  _

 

_ Granny's first husband was, to hear her tell it, the most handsome, wisest, kindest, most generous, most brave, and most able to hold his liquor of any man ever to walk the earth, and she bemoans the sad turn of luck that took him from her prior to his siring any offspring on a near daily basis. There is no higher compliment to be got from his mean old Gran than to be compared to him.  _

 

He stares down at his reflection in the dirty water. 

 

He does not feel like the same person who would go dancing with pretty girls and his wet blanket of a best friend. Who smiled and charmed and beat up bullies in back alleys. 

 

He feels like the man who once killed four people on a crowded train without any one else being the wiser. 

 

He does feel like the boy who's grandmother taught him to use blood and bone and violence to get what he wanted though. 

 

He is himself as much as he has ever been.

 

He is content with that. 

 

Two weeks later, when they come for him, he realizes that that may not be enough. 

 

 

_ You mustn't demand too much. You mustn't go to war. I lost my first husband to it. Your uncle as well. The blood of soldiers is in you but you mustn't go. And you mustn't make anything happen in the war. The cost is always higher than you think it'll be. I lost my darling to it. I'll be damned if you lose something that important. You might lose yourself and that would be a terrible thing indeed my lad.  _

**Author's Note:**

> I feel very strange writing a fic about Bucky without really any other characters showing up or even him thinking about Steve that much. Also, I'm not sure if this makes any sense. Things jump around a lot and I never outright talk about things as magic. But, I feel like Bucky's head is kind of a mess at the moment so it fits...I dunno. 
> 
> Btw, the Gaelic there is the Lord's Prayer (at least according to the internet)
> 
> Also, I am not Irish so if anyone who is Irish wants to advise me on the matter feel free to do so.


End file.
